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Safer Play Sand

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It's not something you really think about- the sand in the sandbox. Taking your kids to play there seems harmless, but it turns out it could contain crystalline silica, a known carcinogen, or even asbestos tremloite.

 
 

There are a few good alternatives if you have your own sandbox including Safesand. There's also a ton of good information including a NY Times article on their website. Another place to get the facts: Safemama, and Non Toxic Kids.

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Comments (5)

I think the best way to make a sandbox safer is to get a cover for it. The sand boxes I grew up around were litter boxes for the neighborhood cats. Eww.

posted by upstategirl on June 5th 2009 at 10:31pm
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I just posted about this on facebook a couple days ago! I was surprised too.

posted by serelile on June 6th 2009 at 3:24am
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I want to find plans to build a Sand Box like that. Any ideas where to find plans?

posted by wesley on June 8th 2009 at 11:51am
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For a good sandbox plan, I recommend Creative Homeowner's Ultimate Guide to Kids' Play Structures & Tree Houses. The only problem I encountered was that my 4 year old now wants me to build everything shown in the book.

posted by Splomo on June 10th 2009 at 3:32pm
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This posted just as my husband was finishing up building our son's sandbox. We were all very excited until I noticed that the 32 bags (yes 32!) of sand my husband filled it with had the prop 65 carcinogen warning label.

So I need to call around and see if I can find any place that sells natural sand. In the mean time I found several postings that indicated the carcinogen warning maybe be a bit overblown. Read the 'Chemicals in sand - is it safe?' and 'Safe silica free sand' postings here: http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/where2buy/sandbox.html read

In the mean time here is the new box (minus the seat capper that still has to be built around the edge): http://julie329.vox.com/library/post/sandbox.html

posted by CrewJulie on June 11th 2009 at 10:13pm
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